On Wed, 29 Dec 2021 at 19:00, Gordon Messmer <gordon.mess...@gmail.com>
wrote:
[..]

> > To me this is like saying 'move everything into /usr but because its
> > volitile move it back into /var but in a sub-directory from where it
> > was so you can keep an image running.' In this case, this doesn't
> > sound like any savings and more of a headache of why did it corrupt
> > this time.
>
> But this doesn't.  Why would you need to move the rpmdb?  Users probably
> aren't installing rpm packages in containers at run time (particularly
> if /usr is read-only); installation typically happens when building the
> container image, at which point /usr isn't read-only.
>

This is all because none of the file systems available on Linux invented
volumes properties.

+15 years ago on ZFS introduction on Solaris people had exactly the same
problems and all those issues have been resolved by introduction of the
volume property marking that exact volume needs to be snapshotted and
cloned on making new boot env (global or non-global zone as well).
That issue is not limited only to rpm database content or generally /var
content.
In case scenario when new boot env is created and on that new tree would be
upgraded majost upgrade of the database engine which on first execution
will change format of the database files you want to have some "backup
solution" that in case if anything would go wrong you want to be able
quickly be able back to original state.

In such cases new upgraded database engine binaries will be on /usr and
let's say that database data on /srv/database.
To create new boot env in which not only / and /usr will be mounted from
from exact clones all what needs to be done in case Solaris or Linux with
ZFS would be mark volume mounted in /var that it needs to be
snapshotted and cloned during created new instance of the bootable
filesystems tree.

In other words trying to solve the multiple volumes mount problem by moving
more and more to a single volume (because that is the easiest case) is
pointless because it will solve only the rpm database problem but it will
not solve issues of mounting multiple volumes.
Solving that kind of problems on top of all possible to use on Linux
like systems is as well pointless because to solve such thing in civilised
way it is necessary to have snapshotable FS which in case of linux for now
is only btrfs (optionally zfs as well).

Volulumes properties stored in volume metadata inside storage pools solves
much more use cases than only /, /usr and /var separation. From that point
of view I really do not understand why btrfs developers resist to
implement well known ZFS functionality.

In other words when btrfs will have possibility to possibility to describe
a set of volumes which will be necessary to snapshot and clone on making
new boot env volumes set SuSE will be rolling back move rpm database back
to the /var where it should be.

kloczek
-- 
Tomasz Kłoczko | LinkedIn: http://lnkd.in/FXPWxH
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